Duke Football: Brittain Brown has chance to make history in 2018

The Duke football single season record for rushing yards has stood since 1972. Is this the year the record is broken?

There is no question that Brittain Brown is the key to the Duke football team’s offense. The redshirt sophomore is ready to build off a breakout year last year where he ran for over 700 rushing yards and seven touchdowns, a season that he split time with Shaun Wilson.

Now that Wilson has graduated, this run game belongs to Brown and he will be entering this year as the team’s featured running back. This means that with the additional workload, the Duke running back should have his sights set on the school’s single season rushing record.

The record was set in 1972 by Steve Jones, a season where he ran for 1,236 rushing yards. This is a record that has stood the test of time and the most recent run at this record came in 2003. That season Chris Douglas came within 100 yards, finishing the year with 1,138 rushing yards.

Brown though is an explosive runner and a special talent at the running back position. Last year, he averaged 5.4 yards per carry, which led the team for players who had at least double digit carries.

The question for Brown is how many carries will he need to surpass the single season rushing record. The Blue Devils currently have 12 games on their schedule for the coming year so Brown would need to average 104 rushing yards per game to reach 1,248 rushing yards. If he keeps his average of 5.4 yards per carry, this means that Brown would have to carry it 230 times or just under 19 times per game.

This is a substantial increase in his workload from last year, a season where he only averaged 10 per game. However, the coaching staff should recognize the correlation between Brown’s carries and their win record. In the games where Brown had more than 10 carries, the Blue Devils were 5-0, but were 0-4 in games  when he had single digits.

Now that Wilson is no longer in this offense, it will be up to Brittain Brown to pick up the extra workload. These extra carries, along with his big play ability, could make for a record setting year for Brown.